to dance at his birthday."

BEATRICE MERGER.

Beatrice Merger, whose name might figure at the head of one of Mr.
Colburn's politest romances--so smooth and aristocratic does it
sound--is no heroine, except of her own simple history; she is not a
fashionable French Countess, nor even a victim of the Revolution.

She is a stout, sturdy girl of two-and-twenty, with a face beaming with
good nature, and marked dreadfully by smallpox; and a pair of black
eyes, which might have done some execution had they been placed in a
smoother face. Beatrice's station in society is not very exalted; she
is a servant of all-work: she will dress your wife, your dinner, your
children; she does beefsteaks and plain work; she makes beds, blacks
boots, and waits at table;--such, at least, were the offices which she
performed in the fashionable establishment of the writer of this book:
perhaps her history may not inaptly occupy a few pages of it.

"My father died," said Beatrice, "about six years since, and left my
poor mother with little else but a small cottage and a strip of land,
and four children too young to work. It was hard enough in my father's
time to supply so many little mouths with food; and how was a poor
widowed woman to provide for them now, who had neither the strength nor
the opportunity for labor?

"Besides us, to be sure, there was my old aunt; and she would have
helped us, but she could not, for the old woman is bed-ridden; so she
did nothing but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning till
night: heaven knows, poor old soul, that she had no great reason to be
very happy; for you know, sir, that it frets the temper to be sick; and
that it is worse still to be sick and hungry too.

"At that time, in the country where we lived (in Picardy, not very far
from Boulogne), times were so bad that the best workman could hardly
find employ; and when he did, he was happy if he could earn a matter of
twelve sous a day. Mother, work as she would, could not gain more than
six; and it was a hard job, out of this, to put meat into six bellies,
and clothing on six backs. Old Aunt Bridget would scold, as she got her
portion of black bread; and my little brothers used to cry if theirs did
not come in time. I, too, used to cry when I got my share; for mother
kept only a little, little piece for herself, and said that she had
dined in the fields,--God pardon her for the lie! and bless her, as I
am sure He did; for, but for H